One Wedding and a Revolution

The Fight for Marriage Equality

On February 12, 2004, the mayor of San Francisco ordered city officials to allow lesbian and gay couples to get married. Pioneering activists Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, celebrating their 51st anniversary, had the privilege of being the first couple to tie the knot. One Wedding and a Revolution goes behind the scenes at the mayor's office during the frantic days leading up to February 12th, and into city hall with exclusive footage of this momentous historical event. Packed with humor, compassion, and political grit, this inspiring short documentary puts a human face on the fight for marriage equality --- of those who deserve their rights and those who have the political power to make change.

"One Wedding and a Revolution charts a history no one will forget. It brilliantly captures one of the most important moments in our civil rights struggle with two icons of our movement as its stars.

Comments (1)

Debra

New Day Films•2 years ago

It was 9am when I got a phone call from my friend, Joyce, who worked in Mayor Newsom's office. "You have got to get down to city hall RIGHT NOW with a film crew. The Mayor has just decided to start issuing marriage licenses to gay couples and Del and Phyllis are going to be the first couple ...Read more

It was 9am when I got a phone call from my friend, Joyce, who worked in Mayor Newsom's office. "You have got to get down to city hall RIGHT NOW with a film crew. The Mayor has just decided to start issuing marriage licenses to gay couples and Del and Phyllis are going to be the first couple to get married." "He can't do that," I protested. "I know," said Joyce, "but he is." I did what Joyce said and it was one of the most moving moments of my life.

Related videos

THE CAMPAIGN follows the people behind California's historic "No on 8'' campaign to defend same-sex marriage through exclusive behind the scenes footage, interwoven with the national history of same-sex relationship recognition since the 1950s. The story focuses on an ensemble of five characters -- Alison, Holli, Richard, Anne and Claudia…

The winner of over ten awards including the American Library Associations Notable Video for Adults." POLITICAL ANIMALS tells the story of the civil rights struggle of this century - the gay rights movement - through the eyes of first four members of the LGBT Legislative Caucus: Jackie Goldberg, Christine Kehoe,…

EMMY Award-winning Screaming Queens tells the little-known story of the first known act of collective, violent resistance to the social oppression of queer people in the United States - a 1966 riot in San Francisco's impoverished Tenderloin neighborhood, three years before the famous gay riot at New York's Stonewall Inn.…

A powerful and moving piece documenting the lesbian, gay and bisexual movement in the early 1990s, A Simple Matter of Justice expresses all the emotions of the joyful protest that was the 1993 March on Washington. Sections on civil rights, AIDS and health care, the military and families are woven…

Academy Award winning director Richard Schmiechen (The Times of Harvey Milk) vividly portrays the life and work of the woman described by the Los Angeles Times as "The Rosa Parks of Gay Rights" in Changing Our Minds: The Story of Dr. Evelyn Hooker.
During the repressive 1950s, Dr. Evelyn Hooker…

On June 27, 1969, a police raid on a Greenwich Village gay bar took a surprising turn when patrons decided it was time to fight back. As a riot erupted outside the Stonewall Inn, a new era in the Gay Rights Movement was born. Vito Russo, a 23-year-old film student,…

In the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in the Greenwich Village section of New York City. Such raids were not unusual in the late 1960s, an era when homosexual sex was illegal in every state but Illinois. That night,…

Being a lesbian no longer means giving up motherhood, thanks in part to the culture-changing impact of this feminist classic. These pioneering lesbian mothers figured out how to bring children into their families while overcoming social and legal hurdles
Hailed as a pioneering achievement when it was first released in…

An illuminating and compassionate look at the world of transgender identity, as seen through portraits of some of San Francisco's leading gender mixers. Whether by birth or by choice, sometimes with the assistance of hormones or surgical prostheses, we meet those who blur the lines of male and female.

This film tells the story of how corporate sponsors coopted the concept of LGBTQ pride, turning it into a feel-good brand and blunting its radical political edge. The film locates the origins of pride in sites of grassroots resistance and revolt, going back to the anti-police Stonewall uprising led by…

In 1992 Cheryl Summerville, a cook at a Cracker Barrel restaurant in Georgia, received a termination paper stating she was fired for "failing to demonstrate normal heterosexual values." She was shocked to discover that in more than 40 states it was legal to fire workers for their sexual orientation. OUT…

"A far-ranging expose of hate politics that crosses lines of race, religion and sexual identity." - B. Ruby Rich
BALLOT MEASURE 9 is the chilling true story of the unprecedented violence unleashed by an anti-gay campaign in Oregon, when activists slept with guns under their beds and had full-time police…